Difficulty Tiers Explained: How to Change Difficulty

Difficulty settings greatly affect the strength of enemies as well as rewards you can obtain in Diablo 4 (D4). Read on to learn everything about the game's difficulty settings and how to unlock each difficulty tier.

All Difficulty Tiers and How to Unlock

Normal Difficulty Tiers and Effects

Torment Difficulty Tiers and Effects

All Torment difficulties also gives an increased drop rate for Legendary and Ancestral items so it is highly recommended to play at a Torment difficulty that your character can defeat enemies at a reasonable pace and not die from random attacks.

Additionally, all non-legendary and unique items will no longer drop and if an item would drop that is of these rarity, they will automatically be converted into their respective crafting material instead.

Enemy Levels Are Tied to Your Level and Not Your Difficulty

A new update included to the game is that the current difficulty tier will not longer affect the levels of enemies you encounter in Sanctuary. Instead, their current level will now be the same as your current level and will gain stat multipliers depending on your chosen difficulty.

This means that levels will no longer be a big factor in choosing your difficulty setting and will mostly depend on your character's current build setup and how reliably they can work on your chosen difficulty setting.

How to Change Difficulty

Choose Difficulty Tier at Character Select Screen

In the character creation screen, you are only given the option to start at Normal or Hard difficulty. However, after reaching certain milestones in the game, you'll be able to head to the menu and choose higher difficulties for your character.

Change Anytime at World Tier Statues

This list is still incomplete and we're updating this section to list down all the world tier statues location in the game.

Upon reaching Kyovashad, you'll start and be able to change your difficulty settings. From here on, you'll be able to access difficulty tier statues and change them on locations where difficulty tier selectors are available.

Higher Tiers Can Be Unlocked

All the new difficulty settings have their own unlock conditions. While Hard and Expert can easily be unlocked, the Penitent tier is only unlocked after reaching level 50.

From here onward, each Torment Difficulty can only be unlocked by progressign the pit and pushing through the pit's higher tiers will unlock more torment tiers to choose from.

What Are Difficulty Settings?

A Measure of Game Difficulty for a Character

Difficulty Tiers are a gameplay system in Diablo 4 that increase the difficulty of the game and allow the player to gain even greater and rarer rewards.

Separated Between Base Difficulty and Torment Difficulty

Unlike the previous seasons, the game's difficulty will now have 8 tiers. The first 4 tiers which are Normal, Hard, Expert, and Penitent will cater to characters that are currently leveling to the level cap.

Meanwhile, new 4 tiers of Torment difficulty (Torment I, II, III, and IV) offers challenges that can greatly hamper your progression if you're unprepared but it will also increase the rewards you can gain by playing through Diablo 4's endgame content.

Diablo 4 Related Guides

Beginner Guides and Best Tips for Getting Started

Tips and Tricks